Converting MySQL to PostgreSQL

Very Short Intro

You may have read a bunch of short articles with the same name on the web, but they were just snippets of information you needed. It's time to put it all together.

You have a project in MySQL and suddenly you find out that you need to switch to PostgreSQL. Suddenly you see that there are many flavours of SQL and that your seemingly basic constructions throw a lot of errors. You don't have time to really rewrite your code from scratch, it may come later...

Actually, there may be some good reasons to switch...

• you can sell your product with total peace of mind (PostgreSQL is BSD licensed, MySQL is more complicated)
• you can find articles "Converting from MySQL to PostgreSQL" on the web; you won't find any "Converting from PostgreSQL to MySQL"
• PostgreSQL may not be just another lousy database if Skype, Cisco, Juniper, IMDb, Pandora decided to rely on it and Sun Microsystems made it database of choice (which is explicitly funny because Sun recently acquired MySQL).

With PostgreSQL you may still feel a little like a second-class citizen, but not really the ignored one. There are some major projects like Asterisk, Horde or DBMail that have recognized its qualities and although MySQL was their first choice database, they are showing effort to make things run here too.

Check The Server Running

Most likely you don't need this chapter, but very briefly: after you've installed your package with PostgreSQL on your Linux machine (be it from a package or following these notes), you need to do something like

su -
su - postgres
createdb test
psql test
=# create user username password ' password ';
-- To change a password:
=# alter role username password ' password ';
=# create database databasename with encoding 'utf8';
=# grant all privileges on database databasename to username;
=# \l
=# \c databasename
=# \q

vi /etc/postgresql/pg_hba.conf

host    all         all         0.0.0.0           0.0.0.0            password

be SURE to cover this security issue with iptables!

/etc/init.d/postgresql reload or /usr/lib/postgresql/bin/pg_ctl reload

postmaster successfully signaled

psql -h server -d databasename -U username

databasename=>

Convert and Import

Dump your tables with

mysqldump --compatible=postgresql databasename > outputfile.sql

but even then you will have to change quote escaping:

sed -i "s/\\\'/\'\'/g" outputfile.sql

You also have to manually modify the data types etc. as discussed later.

After you convert your tables, import them the same way you were used to in MySQL, that is

psql -h server -d databasename -U username -f data.sql

The Environment

Perl

You will need to install an appropriate DBD package. In Debian/Ubuntu run apt-get install libdbd-pg-perl.

Changing The Code Quick And Dirty

Perl

MySQL	PostgreSQL	comments
$db=DBI->connect("dbi:mysql:database= ... )	$db=DBI->connect("dbi:Pg:database= ... )	All you have to do is changing mysql to Pg. Beware the case sensitivity.

SQL

Syntax

MySQL	PostgreSQL	comments
#	--	MySQL uses nonstandard # to begin a comment line; PostgreSQL uses ANSI standard double dash; use the ANSI standard, both databases understand it. (However, MySQL requires a space after --, whilst it is not mandatory in PostgreSQL)
' " vs. `	' vs. "	MySQL uses ' or " to quote values (i.e. WHERE name = "John"). This is not the ANSI standard for databases. PostgreSQL uses only single quotes for this (i.e. WHERE name = 'John'). Double quotes are used to quote system identifiers; field names, table names, etc. (i.e. WHERE "last name" = 'Smith'). MySQL uses ` (accent mark or backtick) to quote system identifiers, which is decidedly non-standard. Note: you can make MySQL interpret quotes like PostgreSQL using SET sql_mode='ANSI_QUOTES'.
... WHERE lastname="smith"	... WHERE lower(lastname)='smith'	PostgreSQL is case-sensitive for string comparisons. The value 'Smith' is not the same as 'smith'. This is a big change for many users from MySQL (in MySQL, VARCHAR and TEXT columns are case-insensitive unless the "binary" flag is set) and other small database systems, like Microsoft Access. In PostgreSQL, you can either: Use the correct case in your query. (i.e. WHERE lastname='Smith') Use a conversion function, like lower() to search. (i.e. WHERE lower(lastname)='smith') Use a case-insensitive operator, like ILIKE or *~
`LastName` = `lastname` and maybe not?	"LastName" <> "lastname"	Database, table, field and columns names in PostgreSQL are case-independent, unless you created them with double-quotes around their name, in which case they are case-sensitive. In MySQL, table names can be case-sensitive or not, depending on which operating system you are using. Note that PostgreSQL actively converts all non-quoted names to lower case and so returns lower case in query results!
'foo' || 'bar' means OR	'foo' || 'bar' means string concatenation (= 'foobar')	MySQL uses C-language operators for logic, SQL requires AND, OR.

Data Types

The ideas for this table were partially derived from automated dump converting script [1]. Official documentation:

• PostgreSQL 8.4 Data Types
• MySQL 5.1 Data Types

List of available data types can be reached also by using psql's internal slash command \dT.

MySQL	PostgreSQL	ANSI Standard SQL	comments
TINYINT SMALLINT MEDIUMINT BIGINT	SMALLINT SMALLINT INTEGER BIGINT	INTEGER INTEGER INTEGER NUMERIC(20)	see [2]; integer size in PostgreSQL is 4 Bytes signed (-2147483648 – +2147483647)
TINYINT UNSIGNED SMALLINT UNSIGNED MEDIUMINT UNSIGNED INT UNSIGNED BIGINT UNSIGNED	SMALLINT INTEGER INTEGER BIGINT NUMERIC(20)	INTEGER INTEGER INTEGER NUMERIC(10) NUMERIC(20)	SQL doesn't know UNSIGNED, all numbers are signed.
FLOAT FLOAT UNSIGNED	REAL REAL	FLOAT4 FLOAT4
DOUBLE	DOUBLE PRECISION	FLOAT8
BOOLEAN	BOOLEAN	BOOLEAN	MySQL Booleans are an alias for TINYINT(1); PostgreSQL doesn't auto-convert numbers into booleans.
TINYTEXT TEXT MEDIUMTEXT LONGTEXT	TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT	TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT
BINARY(n) VARBINARY(n) TINYBLOB BLOB MEDIUMBLOB LONGBLOB	BYTEA BYTEA BYTEA BYTEA BYTEA BYTEA	BIT(n) BIT VARYING(n) TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT
ZEROFILL	not available	not available
DATE TIME DATETIME TIMESTAMP	DATE TIME [WITHOUT TIME ZONE] TIMESTAMP [WITHOUT TIME ZONE] TIMESTAMP [WITHOUT TIME ZONE]	not available TIME TIMESTAMP TIMESTAMP
column SERIAL equals to: column BIGINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT UNIQUE or: column INT DEFAULT SERIAL equals to: column INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT UNIQUE	column SERIAL equals to: CREATE SEQUENCE name; CREATE TABLE table ( column INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT nextval(name) );	column SERIAL	Note for PostgresSQL: SERIAL = 1 – 2147483647 BIGSERIAL = 1 – 9223372036854775807 SERIAL is in fact an entity named SEQUENCE. It exists independently on the rest of your table. If you want to cleanup your system after dropping a table, you also have to DROP SEQUENCE name. More on that topic... Note for MySQL: column SERIAL PRIMARY KEY or column SERIAL, PRIMARY KEY(column) Will result in having 2 indexes for column. One will be generated by the PRIMARY KEY constraint, and one by the implicit UNIQUE constraint present in the SERIAL alias. This has been reported as a bug and might be corrected.
column ENUM (value1, value2, [...])	column VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL, CHECK (column IN (value1, value2, [...])) or CREATE TYPE mood AS ENUM ('sad','ok','happy'); CREATE TABLE person ( current_mood mood ... )	column VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL, CHECK (column IN (value1, value2, [...]))	PostgreSQL doesn't have the ENUM types prior to 8.3, so you need to simulate it with contraints when using < 8.3.

Language Constructs

• MySQL 5.1 SQL Statement Syntax
• PostgreSQL 8.1 SQL Commands
• PostgreSQL 8.2 SQL Commands

MySQL	PostgreSQL	comments
DESCRIBE table	Using psql: \d table or SELECT a.attname AS Field, t.typname || '(' || a.atttypmod || ')' AS Type, CASE WHEN a.attnotnull = 't' THEN 'YES' ELSE 'NO' END AS Null, CASE WHEN r.contype = 'p' THEN 'PRI' ELSE '' END AS Key, (SELECT substring(pg_catalog.pg_get_expr(d.adbin, d.adrelid), '\'(.*)\'') FROM pg_catalog.pg_attrdef d WHERE d.adrelid = a.attrelid AND d.adnum = a.attnum AND a.atthasdef) AS Default, '' as Extras FROM pg_class c JOIN pg_attribute a ON a.attrelid = c.oid JOIN pg_type t ON a.atttypid = t.oid LEFT JOIN pg_catalog.pg_constraint r ON c.oid = r.conrelid AND r.conname = a.attname WHERE c.relname = 'tablename' AND a.attnum > 0 ORDER BY a.attnum	PostgreSQL doesn't implement an SQL extension; it uses psql's internal slash command instead. (Be careful: in the mysql client, \d is shorthand for DROP TABLE)
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS table	DROP TABLE IF EXISTS table	IF EXISTS in DROP TABLE clause only available since PostgreSQL 8.2.
REPLACE [INTO] table [(column, [...])] VALUES (value, [...]) or INSERT INTO table (column1, column2, [...]) VALUES (value1, value2, [...]) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE column1 = value1, column2 = value2	CREATE FUNCTION someplpgsqlfunction() RETURNS void AS $$ BEGIN IF EXISTS( SELECT * FROM phonebook WHERE name = 'john doe' ) THEN UPDATE phonebook SET extension = '1234' WHERE name = 'john doe'; ELSE INSERT INTO phonebook VALUES( 'john doe', '1234' ); END IF; RETURN; END; $$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;	PostgreSQL doesn't implement REPLACE SQL extension. The presented solution uses PL/pgSQL. (Note: MySQL REPLACE INTO deletes the old row and inserts the new, instead of updating in-place.)
SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE '/var/tmp/outfile'	COPY ( SELECT ... ) TO '/var/tmp/outfile'
SHOW DATABASES	Run psql with -l parameter or using psql: \l or SELECT datname AS Database FROM pg_database WHERE datistemplate = 'f'	PostgreSQL doesn't implement an SQL extension.
SHOW TABLES	Using psql: \dt or SELECT c.relname AS Tables_in FROM pg_catalog.pg_class c LEFT JOIN pg_catalog.pg_namespace n ON n.oid = c.relnamespace WHERE pg_catalog.pg_table_is_visible(c.oid) AND c.relkind = 'r' AND relname NOT LIKE 'pg_%' ORDER BY 1	PostgreSQL doesn't implement an SQL extension; it uses psql's internal slash command instead.
SELECT ... LIMIT offset, limit or SELECT ... LIMIT limit OFFSET offset	SELECT ... LIMIT limit OFFSET offset
CREATE TABLE table ( column ... , {INDEX|KEY} [name] (column, [...]) ) or CREATE INDEX name ON table (column, [...])	CREATE INDEX name ON table (column, [...])
USE database ;	Using psql: \c database

Functions

• MySQL 5.1 Functions and Operators
• PostgreSQL 8.1 SQL Functions and Operators
• mysqlcompat, a reimplementation of most MySQL functions in PostgreSQL

MySQL	PostgreSQL	comments
LAST_INSERT_ID()	CURRVAL('serial_variable')	NOTE: it is not only "subsitute string" solution as you need to know the name of SERIAL variable (unlike AUTO_INCREMENT in MySQL). Also note that PostgreSQL can play with the OID of the last row inserted by the most recent SQL command. NOTE2: Even better way to replace LAST_INSERT_ID() is creating a rule, because this cannot suffer from race-conditions: CREATE RULE get_{table}_id_seq AS ON INSERT TO {table} DO SELECT currval('{table}_id_seq'::text) AS id; (usage is somehow strange, you get a result from an INSERT-statement, but it works very well) NOTE3: Another, more readable way: INSERT INTO mytable VALUES (...) RETURNING my_serial_column_name;

Common Errors

• ERROR: relation "something" does not exist - usually table doesn't exist as you probably didn't make it with the new datatypes or syntax. Also watch out for case folding issues; PostgreSQL = postgresql != "PostgreSQL".
• prepared statement "dbdpg_X" does not exist -

PL/pgSQL

Install

In versions prior to 9.0, you have to make it available explicitly for every database:

your_unix$ su - postgres
your_unix$ .../pgsql/bin/createlang plpgsql -h localhost -d databasename

Running A Function

SELECT definedfunction();

Administration

To use the same backup technique as used with MySQL, in /etc/logrotate.d/postgresql-dumps:

/dumps/postgresql/*/*.dump.gz {
        daily
        rotate 20
        dateext
        nocompress
        sharedscripts
        create
        postrotate
                for i in $(su - postgres -c "psql --list -t" | awk '{print $1}' | grep -vE '^$|^template[0-9]'); do
                        if [ ! -e /dumps/postgresql/$i ]; then mkdir -m 700 /dumps/postgresql/$i; fi
                        # compress even in custom format, because it can be compressed more
                        su - postgres -c "pg_dump --format=custom $i" | gzip > /dumps/postgresql/$i/$i.dump.gz
                done
        endscript
}
/dumps/postgresql/*/*.sql.gz {
        daily
        rotate 20
        dateext
        nocompress
        sharedscripts
        create
        postrotate
                for i in $(su - postgres -c "psql --list -t" | awk '{print $1}' | grep -vE '^$|^template[0-9]'); do
                        if [ ! -e /dumps/postgresql/$i ]; then mkdir -m 700 /dumps/postgresql/$i; fi
                        su - postgres -c "pg_dump --format=plain $i" | gzip > /dumps/postgresql/$i/$i.sql.gz
                done
        endscript
}
/dumps/postgresql/*/*.tar.gz {
        daily
        rotate 20
        dateext
        nocompress
        sharedscripts
        create
        postrotate
                for i in $(su - postgres -c "psql --list -t" | awk '{print $1}' | grep -vE '^$|^template[0-9]'); do
                        if [ ! -e /dumps/postgresql/$i ]; then mkdir -m 700 /dumps/postgresql/$i; fi
                        su - postgres -c "pg_dump --format=tar $i" | gzip > /dumps/postgresql/$i/$i.tar.gz
                done
        endscript
}